Restrictions due to poor air quality have affected many aspects of life in China, including the delaying of online shopping deliveries, restaurants being prevented from cooking food should they not be fitted with fume processing equipment, and an increase in outbound passenger volumes from affected areas.

Here are three more ways the Chinese smog has made headlines in recent days.

Chinese lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin local governments for failing to prevent the smog by implementing their own environmental laws, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

A letter by the lawyers was posted on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, the Financial Times said - though these posts have since been deleted.

"There are processes in China for taking the authorities to court over administrative failures," Roderic Wye, an associate fellow of the Asia programme at Chatham House told CNBC via telephone.

But, he added that it would be "difficult for the lawyers to reach a satisfactory conclusion."